Announcing the RISM Digital Center

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

We are pleased to announce that RISM Switzerland has been restructured to form the RISM Digital Center. This evolution is the result of more than a decade of active contribution to the field of digital methods, including the development of tools highly relevant for the entire RISM community and beyond. Earlier this year, the association overseeing RISM Switzerland was renamed the RISM Digital Center Association. At the same time, the Swiss National Science Foundation allocated for the next four years an increased subsidy to bolster the staff dedicated to digital development work. The RISM Digital Center will remain the host of the RISM Switzerland working group with offices at the Swiss National Library.

The RISM Digital Center will work closely with the RISM Editorial Center (Zentralredaktion) in Frankfurt, which continues to be the central contact point for all working groups, libraries and other participants and users of the RISM project. As before, the Editorial Center will also ensure that the data is regularly published through the online catalog maintained by the Bavarian State Library. The Digital Center will focus on the maintenance of the digital infrastructure, with a priority on the maintenance and the development of Muscat, the central software utilized by RISM contributors. It will continue to manage its installation at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, from which all the working groups benefit. The teams of the two Centers will work together to foster a community-driven development philosophy based on close contact between technical development and the daily work of all RISM contributors.

For the RISM community, this development is a welcome reinforcement of the international network of the project. We believe this new structure will optimize the resources the RISM community currently has and strengthen the project at all levels. Good maintenance of the digital infrastructure will allow the Editorial Center to further improve its support for the working groups, the libraries and all other partners of the project whose contributions form the core of RISM.

For more information about this news, about the staff, and the current projects, visit the websites https://rism.info and https://rism.digital, or contact us directly.

Klaus Pietschmann
President, Internationales Quellenlexikon der Musik e.V.

Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen
President, RISM Digital Center Association

Category: New at RISM